The Empire Page 13

  Tears began to well in Padma’s eyes. “I don’t want to take something so precious from her.”

  Seen By Her Nation could not understand Padma’s words, though she could see how the gift affected her. She clutched Padma’s arm affirmatively then turned to leave.

  “How do I say ‘thank you’?” Padma asked.

  “Pee-lah-mah-yah-yea,” replied Takoda.

  “Pee-lah-mah-yah-yea!” said Padma, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Seen By Her Nation stopped and turned back to Padma. She placed a leathered hand on Padma’s face, smiling as she wiped away a tear. She then turned to walk back to her cabin.

  One by one, the others stepped forward with food, blankets, clothing, and supplies. One of Sitting Bull’s teenage daughters, Standing Holy, handed Kyle a bundle of clothes—fringed buckskin pants, matching boots, and a cream-colored cotton work shirt. Kyle smiled and thanked the pretty young woman. She gave the handsome white man a shy smile in return.

  After the others had left, Takoda turned to Padma and Kyle. “Is there anything else you need?” he asked.

  “No—thank you, I mean, pee-lah-mah-yah-yea,” said Padma, smiling. “Your people have been generous beyond words.”

  Kyle looked at Padma and Takoda. The handsome young brave concealed his crush for the beautiful Messiah behind serious, dutiful brown eyes. Though overwhelmed by the selflessness of Takoda and his people in the face of their desperation, there was still room in Padma’s mind’s eye to notice Takoda’s chiseled face, dark chocolate eyes, and beautiful brown-skinned physique. Kyle noticed how well matched the pair seemed physically, with their skin and eyes and long black hair. Kyle felt a pang of jealousy, stirred with the awareness that he did not belong in this Lakota village.

  “I will see you in the morning,” Takoda said as he turned to leave. Kyle watched as Padma’s gaze held on to Takoda’s wake a moment too long. Suddenly aware of Kyle’s eyes on her, Padma turned to him.

  “What?” she asked, feigning innocence.

  “Uh huh,” Kyle replied skeptically.

  “Honestly—I’m old enough to be his mother,” Padma said. “Almost.”

  “Cougar,” Kyle said.

  Padma smacked Kyle’s shoulder.

  Kyle lifted the flap of the tipi for Padma and motioned for her to enter.

  “After you, Messiah,” he said.

  “That’s going to get old in a big hurry,” she warned, clutching her dress and moccasins as she ducked into the tipi.

  As she crossed the threshold, she was struck by the musky smell of buffalo hides mixed with charred wood. Blankets and buffalo pelts lay on the ground on either side of the tipi. Charred stones surrounded a fire pit in the center. An inner wall of deerskin, an ozan, was tied to the tipi’s supporting poles. The ozan extended seven feet up the tipi’s walls, then broke into a circular canopy above Kyle’s and Padma’s heads. An opening in the center of the canopy allowed smoke from the fire pit to escape from the tipi. Brightly colored painted geometric patterns ran vertically up the seams where the ozan was tied to the cottonwood poles—red bars with yellow spots and black accents, red and blue diamonds, red, yellow, and blue circles.

  Kyle took off his backpack and set it on the ground, then exited to retrieve their supplies, including a wooden bucket, a charred metal pot, several cloth bags, a few ears of corn, and several wrapped paper bundles. He grabbed the food just before the skinny yellow dog that had been following them snatched away one of the parcels. Kyle opened one of the wrappers—inside was a one-pound cut of dried beef. He looked around to see if anyone was watching, then tore off a piece and tossed it to the dog. The yellow dog scarfed it down and wagged his tail for more. Kyle realized he had created a new problem.

  The stillness inside the tipi contrasted with the noisy energy of the crowds that had greeted Kyle and Padma. For the first time since their arrival, the couple was alone.

  Padma watched Kyle as he knelt on one of the buffalo hides to inventory their food rations. She clutched the wedding dress in her hands. Her heart began to race, and her breathing ran increasingly shallow as the impossibility of their situation landed on her. She gripped the dress tighter as she began to panic.

  Kyle looked up from what he was doing to see Padma in distress, gasping for air. He leapt up from the buffalo skin and snatched the wedding dress and its wrapper from her hands. He tossed the dress aside and quickly fashioned the wrapper into a makeshift paper bag.

  “Love, hold this,” Kyle instructed. “Breathe into the bag.”

  Padma’s eyes were wide with panic. She nodded and took the bag, breathing into it as Kyle stroked her back.

  “That’s it,” Kyle said. “You’re doing great, love.”

  As Padma recovered the carbon dioxide she had exhaled into the bag, her respiratory alkalosis abated, and her breathing gradually calmed to normal.

  “Sit down, love,” Kyle said.

  Kyle took her arm with one hand, his other on her back as he gently sat her on one of the buffalo hides. He sat beside her, stoking her back as she recovered.

  “Deep breaths, love,” said Kyle. “Nice, relaxed, deep breaths. You’re doing great.”

  Padma inhaled fully and exhaled.

  “It just hit me,” Padma said. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I know,” Kyle said.

  “This seems real,” she said. “This doesn’t seem like a dream. But this can’t be real.”

  Kyle had not fully embraced their new reality either, though his mind was too fully immersed in their survival to reality-check their circumstances.

  “Love,” he said, “I think this is real.”

  Padma tried to summon herself.

  “I’m OK now,” she said, nodding. “What are we going to do?”

  Kyle nodded at the foodstuff parcels on the other buffalo skin.

  “We’ve got a pound of dried beef, a pound of dried bacon, a few ears of dried corn, a couple cups of beans, and a cup of sugar. If we ration it, it’s only enough for a day—maybe two. If this is the best these people can do for their messiah, I don’t want to think about what they’re trying to live on.

  “Survival is the first order of business. After that, I can figure out how to defeat the world’s largest army. I have to get food and supplies.”

  “How does that work, exactly?” asked Padma. “It’s not like there’s a corner bodega.”

  “No, there isn’t. I’m going to need to go to the nearest store.”

  “Which is where, exactly?”

  Kyle made a blade with his hand, slicing the air to the left of the orange of the setting sun glowing through their tipi wall.

  “About 200 miles,” he said. “That way.”

  Padma raised her eyebrows. “And how, exactly, are we going to make a 400-mile round trip?”

  Kyle took a deep breath. “We are not going to make a 400-mile round trip. I am.”

  Padma looked at him, stunned. “Don’t even think about leaving me here alone!”

  Kyle held Padma’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “To the whites, you’d be an Indian squaw who’s off the reservation. You’d attract a lot of attention—a lot of bad attention.”

  “You would protect me. You always protect me.”

  “The place where I’m going, everybody’s got a gun,” Kyle said. “Maybe I could protect you, but that’s what I’d be spending most of my time doing. Our best-case scenario is that we don’t get killed and you don’t get raped, but we’re going to have a tough time getting the supplies we need while I’m in a gunfight with the entire town.”

  Padma looked down, trying to reconcile her fear with Kyle’s logic.

  “Seven years ago, you promised you would never leave me,” she said.

  “Technically, I’m not going to
make that promise for another 111 years,” replied Kyle.

  Padma allowed a laugh to break the moment.

  “Asshole,” she said. “How long will you be?”

  “Four days to get there, one day to supply, five or six days to return—I’ll be driving at least one loaded wagon, and I’ll be moving slower.”

  “Why does it take so long?” asked Padma. “Can’t you take a train?”

  “The trains don’t cross the Lakota territory from east to west,” explained Kyle. “Technically, it’s illegal to lay tracks on Lakota territory, though the reality is that the railroads are worried about the financial downside of native attacks.

  “The only train in South Dakota runs north-south along the southwest edge of the state, from Deadwood to Rapid City to Nebraska.”

  Padma marveled at how the former Delta operator had already thought through the logistics.

  “You’re in your element here,” observed Padma. “All my MBA skills are completely useless. Crunching a spreadsheet or running a Bloomberg terminal won’t do a fucking thing to keep us alive.”

  Kyle took his wife’s hand.

  “You’re a leader. You made an executive decision to save these people,” said Kyle. “Your ‘white servant’ is just following your orders.”

  “Sorry about that,” she said.

  Kyle kissed her hand. “I’ll make sure you’re set before I go.”

  “I can manage,” Padma said. “You do what you need to do.”

  Kyle watched Padma’s face as she struggled to summon bravery in the face of unimaginable circumstance. Kyle pulled her close.

  “Beloved, if there was another way…” Kyle said.

  “I know,” she nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  Padma was silent for a moment, thinking.

  “Kyle?”

  “What?”

  “What was that article on your computer?”

  Kyle looked at Padma, then pulled his computer out of his pack. He turned it on and handed it to her.

  Padma read the article and gasped.

  Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.

  He was an Indian with a white man’s spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.

  The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.

  We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.

  —L. Frank Baum

  “This is the Frank Baum that wrote The Wonderful World of Oz?” asked Padma.

  ‘Yup. He’ll write the book in about 10 years. Right now, in 1890, he’s the editor of The Black Hills Pioneer. He’ll write this article in a few months after Sitting Bull is murdered by reservation police. The fact that he advocated genocide doesn’t get much play.”

  “We’re not exactly over the rainbow, are we?”

  “No,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “This is not the place where dreams come true.”

  Standing Rock Reservation

  South Dakota

  September 12, 1890

  08:39 hours

  Timeline 003

  Padma opened her eyes. A shaft of morning light pierced the center of the ozan, making the center fire pit an oasis of light in the shadows. She felt for Kyle next to her in their buffalo bed—the space was vacant. She tried to sit up. Pain wracked her back from a fitful sleep on the ground. She reached for her backpack next to the bed, unzipped it, and retrieved a bright orange Hermès toiletry bag. She examined her face in a compact mirror.

  “Oh God!” she exclaimed. “I look like shit.”

  The dirty face in the tiny mirror had puffy eyes and tangled hair.

  She noticed that the wooden bucket the tribeswomen had provided was sitting next to the fire pit. It was full of water. A scrap of cloth intended to pass for a washcloth was draped on the side.

  Kyle must have fetched water, she thought.

  Padma heaved off the heavy buffalo pelt and crouched naked in front of the bucket. She dipped into the water with her cupped hands and drank, then splashed water on her face. She soaked the washcloth and gave herself a cursory sponge bath. Water ran down her legs and onto her feet, crusting them with mud on the dirt floor.

  “Goddammit!” she said.

  She knocked the mud off her feet as best she could and sat down on her buffalo bed. Reaching for her Hermès bag, she pulled out some makeup.

  “If I’m going to be a messiah, I might as well look the part,” she said.

  She applied a light base, brushed a whiff of rouge and enhanced her eyes with liner, shadow, and mascara. Satisfied that she had salvaged her face as best she could, she set to work combing the tangles out of her long black hair.

  Her clothes lay on the fur bed on the opposite side of the tipi. She walked to her frontier dressing room and reached for her jeans, then stopped. The beautiful doeskin dress, beaded yoke, and concho belt lay next to her jeans and blouse. She pulled the dress over her head, followed by the yoke. She then tied the leather belt with its smooth silver conchos. The belt’s excess strap ran down her left thigh to her ankle. For extra measure, she decided to pull her hair into two long braids. She instinctively looked for a full-length mirror, then settled for her compact. She nodded at the results.

  I look good, she thought.

  Ready to greet the day, Padma swung open the door flap of the tipi and gasped with surprise.

  Over 100 Lakota men and women were sitting in front of the tipi. They began to murmur excitedly at the sight of the beautiful Messiah in traditional dress.

  “Good morning,” said Takoda.

  Startled, Padma whipped her head to her right to see the sentry guarding her door.

  “Who are these people? Why are they here?” she asked.

  “They have come from neighboring tribes to see the Messiah,” explained Takoda. “Word of your arrival is spreading quickly.”

  “Does the Messiah require anything?” asked Takoda.

  “Yes,” Padma replied. “The Messiah needs to pee.”

  A smile broke Takoda’s stoic face. He pointed to the grove of cottonwood trees behind the tipi.

  “That is a good place,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  As Padma began to walk toward the trees, the others rose to their feet and began to follow her. Takoda raised his hands and o
rdered them to halt. Padma walked into the grove, finding a place that was out of sight of her paparazzi. She hiked up her dress and squatted.

  When she returned to Takoda and her throng, she asked him if he had seen Kyle.

  “Yes, I will take you to him,” he said.

  Padma and Takoda, followed by the multitude, walked to the opposite side of the village. There, she saw Kyle and several tribesmen with horses. Kyle was wearing his gifted fringed frontier pants, boots, and cotton pullover work shirt with band collar, pleated front, and puffed sleeves. When Kyle saw Padma, a broad smile broke onto his face.

  “You look gorgeous!” he said.

  “I like your new look too,” she said, mirroring his grand smile. “What are you doing?”

  “Arranging a ride,” he said. “I’m thinking this one.”

  He patted the neck of a white mustang stallion. The stallion was tall compared to the other small horses—a little over 15 hands. The tribesman held the horse with a simple leather strap that served quadruple duty as bit, bridle, halter, and reins. Kyle nodded to the tribesman, who handed the reins to Kyle. He led the mustang a few feet away from the other horses.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” asked Padma. “You’re not getting on that!”

  Kyle peeled off his frontier shirt, exposing a superhero torso erupting out of his buckskin pants. He handed his shirt to Padma.

  “It’s a little warm this morning. Can you hold this for me, love?” he said.

  Padma took his shirt with an exasperated gasp. Before she could protest, Kyle took the horse’s reins and swung them over its neck. He walked to the horse’s left side and prepared to mount, then changed his mind and walked to the horse’s right side. He mounted the mustang from the ground, scissor kicking his leg up and over the horse’s back.

  The tribesmen nodded at each other. They had never seen a white man ground mount a bareback horse before. They didn’t think the whites could ride a horse without a saddle. Kyle knew he had scored bonus points by mounting on the horse’s right side—whites always mounted on the left.